“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”

Odds are that the name “Goddard” is a combination of Madison Grant and Theodore Stoddard, two proponents of racially discriminating a la eugenics. By combining the two, we can see that not only is Tom relatively well-read on the subject, he’s also not intelligent enough to remember their names.

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy by Lothrop Stoddard argues essentially what Tom purports it to: Stoddard saw the population explosion in colonized peoples, and their mass immigration into the United States, as a peril to the white race. This was a common belief of the “old money” clan, that other races and lower classes aren’t worthy.

Fitzgerald is having some fun here at the expense of his publisher, Scribner’s, which also published Stoddard’s bestseller.

One can only imagine the abject terror Lothrop and Tom would have felt had they known of the 21st century ascension of China, India, Brazil, and other formerly colonized powers.